License converting

[Waz]

Heya,

Currently for my forum I'm using my friends license because he gave me permission to do so, therefore, obviously I installed it on that license.

I was wondering, when I purchase my own license will I be able to just set the redirect without re-installing vBulletin? Because that would be a huge problem.

Thanks,
Waz

[Steve Machol]

Yes, and you will need to do this quickly because you are running vB illegally.

[Waz]

I'm running it illegally?

How is that? It's currently redirected to my forum gamecove.org/forum.. let me verify.

Edit: Yeah, it is legal. My license is redirected.

[Andy Huang]

Actually; what Steve meant is that your friend could not lend you his license (and in turn, would effectively make the license invalid for you) as it violates the license agreement:

The Software is licensed only to you. You may not rent, lease, sublicense, sell, assign, pledge, transfer or otherwise dispose of the Software in any form, on a temporary or permanent basis, without the prior written consent of Jelsoft.

You can review the license agreement here: http://www.vbulletin.com/go/license

[Waz]

well, technically he is assisting me on the forum so basically it is under his possession since the forum is somewhat his.

Is that legal? Also, I should be purchasing the license in a day or two to get rid of this warning thing.

[Andy Huang]

There's a lot of different factors involved, and regardless of how we phrase the license agreement, people will try to find a way to justify their way of working around it.

Logically, if it is his license, it should only be his forum; if it is a joint venture's license, then it should be the joint venture's forum; if it is a company's license, then it should, again, be the company's forum. But people don't always do that (IE: I could, technically, purchase a license on behalf of the company under my name), and it creates many disputes for everyone in the long run (IE: I no longer work with the company; and the company decides to contact Jelsoft claiming that they've paid for the license and demand it to be transferred to another person's name).

While we do try our best to turn a blind eye on cases like this, I'm sure you understand where we are coming from, and so please do sort out this licensing issue as quickly as possible.

[Waz]

I really can understand where you're coming from, and I will try my best to do this.

Someone in my family is going to let me use their credit card to purchase the license tomorrow or the next day. I hope that's alright, since everything will be under my name except for the credit card holder information.

As long as thats cool, I'll be purchasing tomorrow or the next day.

[Andy Huang]

That'd be fine, if the license ends up in someone else's name (IE: card holder), simply let us know the situation by opening a ticket, we can update the information to reflect your name.

To answer your initial question... you would want to upload the files again, as license information are written into the files. You wouldn't, however, need to re-run the install scripts, as the database are already in tact, and there's no licensing information there. Re-uploading the file should not cause any data loss unless you've edited the files to do things that its not supposed to.

[Waz]

So basically just re-edit the config.php to the initial database settings, make a backup of everything and re-upload the new files? Though that might be a pain since I'd have to re-install all of the modification/importing and stuff again, wouldn't I? Or just the .php files?

[Andy Huang]

Beauty is, you don't even need to re-edit the config.php
The downloaded package should have config.php named as "config.php.new", so your old config.php wouldn't be overwritten.
Modifications should remain in tact as long as they don't require any file edits. You'd need to go back and re-edit the php files if they require any edits, though.

[Waz]

Oh so basically I just re-upload everything and it replaces the old ones and all the modifications and such stay?

[Andy Huang]

As long as you haven't made changes to the files; yes, the modifications should stick.
You can also re-upload only the .php files so that your images (IE: customized for your style) wouldn't be changed, too.

[Waz]

Good.

Thanks Andy, I'll do that when I purchase it.